The introduction of the new ThemeRoller-ready CSS framework is especially important as it not only allows for easy theming of included jQuery UI but also allows plugin developers to create their own extensions that can take advantage of ThemeRoller’s visual theming capabilities. Scott Jehl, lead architect of the CSS framework had this to say:

jQuery UI includes a robust CSS Framework (http://docs.jquery.com/UI/Theming/API) designed specifically for building custom jQuery widgets and user interface components. The framework includes classes and helpers that cover a wide array of common user interface needs, and can be manipulated using jQuery UI ThemeRoller. Although the framework is used by all of jQuery UI’s widgets, it is designed to be used in standalone plugin development as well – it’ll even work with code that isn’t running jQuery UI (or even any JavaScript at all!). By building your UI components using the jQuery UI CSS Framework, you will be adopting shared markup conventions and allowing for ease of code integration across the plugin community at large.

As a bonus for framework users, we’ve also created a bookmarklet (http://jqueryui.com/themeroller/developertool/) that allows you to pull ThemeRoller into any page on the web! Just drag it to your Firefox toolbar and you can style away on any page using the jQuery UI CSS Framework. The tool also allows you to download a theme based on your design.

jQuery UI team member Richard Worth commented on this new release:

The jQuery UI Team and the unequaled community that supports it has come together and produced something really awesome in jQuery UI 1.7. This release represents not only where we’ve come today, but gives us a clear vision for where this library is headed. We want to make Rich Internet Applications as easy as jQuery has made Ajax, and that’s really starting to happen.

This new release is immediately available for download and the team has provided a Getting Started with jQuery UI page to help get new users up to speed quickly.

hm, something is very wrong with the speed of the dialog widget. I use ff3/win – when i click on various dialog examples i have 3-4s delay between click and dialog showing up (first there is background, then stripes, then dialog). its pretty useles in that form (if it’s a matter of preloading maybe you should think about doing it on examples page – now it looks like a very sluggish ui). also, closing works only after second click on the X or Cancel buttons.

My problem is with the states. When you click a button, it simply has to change state–it can’t look like the hover state. Of all the widgets featured in ThemeRoller, only the slider shows a state change when you click on something.

To me, that makes the UI feel broken. I did use jQueryUI in one project, but I won’t use it again until this is fixed. I can’t think of a modern UI that works this way. It’s disturbing.

I’ve mentioned this several times, as have others, and I’ve heard that they are working on it so I remain optimistic.

Just a heads up – it seems the dialog problem is just an issue with the website demos (not the library code). I think there’s a little extra script being included by mistake and dialogs are being called twice.

We’re actively working out the kinks on the website to improve its performance and we’ll try to get this issue worked out as soon as we can.

@Nosredna: It would be nice if you posted your issue to the ui-dev group (http://groups.google.com/group/jquery-ui-dev) so we can chat about it and make fixes where appropriate. I think you make a good point about some of the buttons, but overall most widgets employ 3 button states at some point. For example, Accordion and tabs have the same states as the slider handles you mentioned. The days in the datepicker grid do too, though the arrow buttons could use mousedown states. Dialog does need some state help as well, though clicks in the dialog almost always close it, making that less noticeable.

As for the other elements on the page, those aren’t UI widgets, but just state previews. We can improve how those are presented in ThemeRoller, but they are not part of the widget library.

@Damir: If there are limitations, you should definitely ping the jQuery devs via the UI dev mailing list & explain your points. They may be able to address some of your concerns.
.http://groups.google.com/group/jquery-ui-dev

Comment by Rey Bango — March 6, 2009

Nice work, that’s looking a lot more stable since the previous Ajaxian post. Might have to starting using this sometime when I can’t avoid using jquery. I wish Prototype(UI) wasn’t as dead as it is, while there’s plenty of plugins some UI competition wouldn’t hurt “hint”.